Search

Stephen Catterall and Keith Gildart deliver a history that presents an untold story that is indispensable for the understanding of an overlooked youth culture and influential underground music scene. Stephen Catterall's research into the impact of rare US soul music in Britain was first aired at the 2016 workshop "How to Write and Conceptualize the History of Youth Cultures" in Berlin. Catterall and Gildart interject these views within their discourse, providing an insight from living memory into how northern soul became "a way of life" for those involved in its first generational phase. [Extracted from the article]

Affinity by Sarah Waters tells the story of sexless and genderless spirits (and of their human bodily forms, the spiritualists) slowly taking possession of one woman, Margaret Prior, who actually, unknowingly, shelters inner predispositions to spiritualism prior to the spirits' intervention, giving thus credit to what her surname had proleptically heralded from the very start. It all occurs via ocular centrism, embodied by a powerful Gaze, slithering throughout the plot. It first mesmerises the spiritualists-to-be before catapulting them into a maelstrom of reversals and distortions. This twisting manoeuvre can be read as an attempt to outroot and erase previously assimilated societal constructs. The spirits' genderlessness can then deploy unencumbered. A liberating emancipation is finally completed. This article first dwells on ocular centrism before dealing with all the reversals and tiltings progressively coming up to the surface, as well as with genderless metonymic substitutes acting on behalf of the spirits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a discussion on English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy, adapted from the London Lecture at Birkbeck College in November 2019. Topics covered include how he channelled his mental energies into portraying exceptional male characters, such as Michael Henchard and Diggory Venn, the physical attributes of the alpha-male as portrayed in Victorian journals, novels and magazines, and how Hardy portrayed martial masculinity in his novels.

A survey of theories on the passions and action in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain and western Europe reveals that few, if any, of the major writers held the view that reason in any of its functions executes action without a passion. Even rationalists, like Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth and English clergyman Samuel Clarke, recognized the necessity of passion to action. On the other hand, many of these intellectuals also agreed with French philosophers Jean-François Senault, René Descartes, and Nicolas Malebranche that, for passions to be useful or to become virtues, they must be governed by reason. Without the moderation of reason, passions will be unruly, distort our notions of good, and disrupt our rational volitions. In response to these popular early modern perspectives, Enlightenment thinker David Hume offered a now-famous argument that reason without passion cannot motivate, drawing the further conclusion that reason cannot govern the passions, either. Given that no one in Hume's era seemed to defend the claim that reason alone can motivate action, what was Hume's intention? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Rose Tremain’s The Road Home, the culture clash of the British and the East-Central European is portrayed through a complex symbolism centred on images of food, consumption and waste. This literary representation may shed light on British literary auto-images, as well as hetero-images of the Eastern European immigrant. The novel’s presentation of this culture shock is defined by the cultural historical and economic circumstances of the parties. Food and material provide the symbolic sphere where the relationship between Britain and East-Central Europe is characterized in terms of capitalist worldview as opposed to a post-communist existence. William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is the most important intertext for Tremain’s novel. Hamlet is obsessed with the vulnerability of material in light of the spiritual value attached to it in the form of human soul. Stephen Greenblatt’s ideas on food, waste and the Christian belief in divine existence residing in material objects - ideas that originate in early modern times - shed light on the motif of material and food in The Road Home. Seen through the symbolism of food and the idea of differing values being attached to matter, the narrative identity of Lev, the protagonist of Tremain’s work, experiences drastic change due to his encounter with the capitalist, British ‘other’.

Leprosy (or Hansen's disease) was a problem in the colonial Pacific. To control the disease, administrations there and elsewhere tried to isolate so-called ‘lepers’. After a cure became available from the 1940s, this policy of segregation gave way; and by 2000 the World Health Organization's goal of ‘eliminating’ leprosy as a global health burden was declared met. Yet leprosy remains a challenge in many parts of the Pacific and the world. In the Pacific, the historiography of leprosy also raises questions. This article compares the extent of the published research and public awareness of the histories of leprosy relating to the Hawaiian island of Molokai and the Fijian island of Makogai. We further note contrasts between colonial and postcolonial perceptions of the disease. We scope the recent historiography of leprosy, which provides a context for the new research on leprosy in the southwest Pacific collected here. This new research addresses the themes of community formation in places of isolation and the subjective experiences of those affected by the disease. Finally, we offer readers two messages: the first of connection, the second, of humanity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Søren Kierkegaard's account of faith in Philosophical Fragments claims that the historical Incarnation is necessary for faith, but that historical evidence for the Incarnation is neither necessary nor sufficient for faith. It has been argued that the defence of these two claims gives rise to a faith/history problem for Kierkegaard and that it is incoherent to defend an account of faith which affirms both the necessity of the historical Incarnation and rejects the necessity and sufficiency of the historical evidence for the Incarnation. I argue that this problem can be solved by applying Eleonore Stump's (2013) account of divine–human union. I argue that the Incarnation is necessary because it allows us to enjoy a kind of mutual empathy with Christ which is the basis of divine–human union and that the historical evidence is neither necessary nor sufficient since faith is grounded in a second-person experience of Christ. I claim that this solves the faith/history problem and offers a way of defending Kierkegaard's account of faith as coherent. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Shakespeare's Henry V is often paradoxically understood as a nationalistic memorial and an iconoclasm of idol ceremony. Given the play's elaborate use of religious imagery, this paradox extends to the Renaissance controversy over church ceremony. Yet Henry V is also preoccupied with a third, more problematic type of ceremony: that of the public theater. This essay explores theatrical ceremony's phenomenology and argues that the play's most climactic moments--Henry's soliloquy and the St. Crispin's speech--do not mark points of transformation, but instead assert monarchy's and theater's dependence on ceremony and its paradoxes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If George Eliot is a determinist, how can she justify judging her characters on moral grounds? The most influential discussion of her determinism concludes that she believed one overcomes its depressing effects by understanding it. But this view is contradicted by her assertion that free will is a "practical" necessity, even a necessary fiction. Kantian moral theory is strongly present in her work as is shown by her use of Kantian terms, but it is grounded nonmetaphysically. Rationality and the will are essential if one is to feel free to choose. Her concept of whole self in relation to moral choice has links with Bergsonian theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the concept of George Eliot and Fakir Mohan Senapati's fictional works. It states that Eliot's novels demonstrate an inclusive vision of human connectedness that belongs to a special moment in the history of literature, particularly the 19th century historicist realism. It explores the idea of the Western cultural exceptionalism based on the writings of Eliot and Senapati. It argues that the reading of Senapati underscores the ways the narrative conventions Eliot inherited while allowing to expand the social scope of British fiction.

The very idea of unconscious emotion has been thought puzzling. But in recent debate about emotions, comparatively little attention has been given explicitly to the question. I survey a number of recent attempts by philosophers to resolve the puzzle and provide some preliminary remarks about their viability. I identify and discuss three families of responses: unconscious emotions involve conscious feelings, unconscious emotions involve no feelings at all, and unconscious emotions involve unconscious feelings. The discussion is exploratory rather than decisive for three reasons. First, the aim is to provide a framework for the debate, and identify a number of key issues for further research. Second, a number of the positions depend for their plausibility upon theoretical commitments that can be made clear, but cannot be evaluated in detail, in a survey article. Third, I believe no fully satisfactory, comprehensive solution has yet been developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the author discusses portrait paintings and issues surrounding portraiture. Cited are the early Renaissance images of an Italian saint of the era, Bernardino of Siena, as rendered by the artist Sassetta. Under discussion is the notion that the image of saints need not reflect the individual features in order to be sacred images.

The article focuses on the role of Michel de Montaigne in Stephen Toulmin's call to reconfigure the origins of modernity. Toulmin has helped destroy the illusion that the Cartesian quest for certainty is intrinsic to the nature of science and philosophy. The alternative modernity of Motaigne is explored.

Pornography involves the graphic depiction of behavior where this depiction is intended to cause sexual excitement. This can occur in a book, play, movie, cassette, CD, etc. This might also occur via thoughts, like when talking of pornographic thoughts. If the reader denies that thoughts can be a type of pornography, then she should understand this expression to involve thoughts that are caused by a form of media. Violation pornography is pornography where the depicted behavior includes unjust sexual acts, like adultery, rape, and adult-child sex. There are three types of attributes that might be thought to contribute to flourishing: pleasure, desire-fulfillment, and objective-list elements. Objective-list elements are those elements that are thought to contribute to flourishing and that are distinct from pleasure and desire-fulfillment. Pleasure is probably a complex state of affairs that consists of a person having experiences that he wants for their own sake. The reason for such a complex account is that if pleasure is intrinsically good for a person then its goodness must supervene on its intrinsic features. Desire-fulfillment, however, is not something that contributes to flourishing. Where a person is unaware that his desire has been satisfied, it intuitively seems that his life does not go any better.

The author reflects on the life and works of Dr. June Singer. He states that he had known Singer due to her high standards of scholarships and impressive reputation. He adds that he receives crude but constructive criticisms when he selected Singer to analyze his doctoral dissertation. He believes that Singer has accompanied him not only as an analyst but also as a mentor and colleague.

This is an essay about quest and emotion and what we may call the metaphorically feminine. These aspects of existence are, in my mind, inextricably linked and relate in the end to nature, interiority, and even love: a non-parochial politic and unfolding of soul. Cabiria's journey toward self and divinity takes place far beyond system or church and points the way toward that which each of us must undertake if we are to find ourselves in the world and chaos we live in. It is the stuff of psychotherapy besides. What Cabiria attains is poignant and precious and yet, in its very profundity, difficult to articulate or define. A knowing smile and unforgettable glance at the camera eye at the close of our film says it all. Have we perhaps cheapened psychology by submitting it to a kind of fanatical algorithm and reduction? Have we perhaps trivialized paradise by construing it as overly concrete and literal, thereby casting it blithely into the stratosphere? Like all great works of art, Fellini's Nights of Cabiria may be considered from multiple positions and steadfastly resists the neat analyses of guilds, academies, and experts. It is likely that Fellini would have favored this more poetical rendering over the standard clinical fare. Clearly the film has much to do with trial and loss, perseverance and sham, and a woman's ultimate recovery of her own inner resources.We may think about the Christ story as we consider this essay, about the Stations of the Cross and the age-old biblical theme of growth through suffering. See if you do not discern a sort of gnostic reworking of our commoner notions about death and resurrection, ignorance and light, love in both these realms and those. Contemplating our caseloads and disciplines and our own lives as well, we begin to see that our text is universal in its evocation and calling, its creator always meditating on the beauty and travesty of things and the possibilities which inhere in a more genuine life, one which beholds the mystery and design with awe and obeisance and proceeds with humility and grace. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper considers empirical data drawn from reform of a large Australian public sector organization in the context of debate about reform of public sector organizations. It provides an ethnographic account of new public management that confounds propositions drawn from literatures both sympathetic and antithetical to this reform process. Empirically, we find that sedimented bureaucratic principles and innovative 'enterprising' freedom produce new power games around contradictory and unresolved dualisms. Neither reform hopes nor liberal anxieties are supported: instead, we identify continuing points for pressure in the organizational politics of bureaucratic reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sees a systematic unity between Smith's theological view and scientific study of society. Smith's theological outlook as to a benevolent deity is grasped as a metaphysical doctrine in his system of social science. It arises from the fact that while Smith's opinion concerning God's attributes is established, in the first instance, on the basis of his empirical study of nature, it also stands irrespective of other facts which are not in line with the patterns of order and design. Smith's metaphysical proposition as such is methodologically suggestive in that it proposes theoretical possibilities for progress and harmony and rules out the features of conflict at the analytic level. This implies a difficulty in subscribing to a conventional interpretation that introduces the "two Smiths" view (the duality of his method and vision). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes imaginability, conceivability, possibility and the mind-body problem. It tries to show that those who continue to be favorably impressed by philosopher Fodor V. Kripke's line of thought have underestimated the resources that are available to materialists. The mechanisms that are responsible for a number of modal intuitions are unreliable. This might be taken to show that the line of thought presupposes a general skepticism about the ability to obtain knowledge of modal facts. And, by the same token, it might be taken to show that the line of thought in question suffers from a disabling flaw.